A new group in Napanee is stepping in to fill a need that they have identified in local animal rescue efforts.

The Napanee Community Kitten Rescue (NCKR) formed when a handful of Napanee area residents saw that feral kittens were falling through the cracks.

"The shelter doesn't have a foster program at the moment, and they are always overburdened," explained Nancy Clark, president of the NCKR.

Other organizations in the region, such as Feline Fixers, focus on Trap/Neuter/Release (TNR) efforts, where residents of feral cat colonies are captured, spayed or neutered, and re-released into their colonies, but they don't take in kittens found at these colony locations.

"So, there were all these kittens out there with no place to go, and we thought why don't we start doing something about it," said Clark.

Three board members, including Clark as president, and two advisors came together as NCKR and started out with 19 kittens in their care.

"We have a lot of kittens," said Clark. "It's been an interesting time. We have older kittens, younger kittens, kittens that needed to be bottle fed, kittens in very bad situations that were almost dead when we got them but who are thriving now."

Feral cat populations in Ontario continue to rise, according to Clark.

"It's a project that I think there is a huge need for," she said. "The overpopulation of cats is a huge problem. People aren't spaying and neutering, they are dumping their cats and those cats are having kittens. There's colonies building everywhere."

Napanee is no exception, though Clark was unwilling to speculate on numbers.

"There are a lot,” she said. “I wouldn't like to put an estimate on it, actually, because I think you'd be surprised. If you look at Peterborough they are looking at about 25,000 feral cats. So look at Napanee; it's a smaller population but it's also rural, so there's a lot of feral cat colonies in barns. I would suspect thousands."

TNR works well at controlling existing feral cat populations. But if litters of kittens aren't picked up, especially if they are younger than 12 weeks old, they will most likely die to predation or colony fighting.

"It's one of the things that we can do, and we have had to do, is remove kittens from a colony because they're under threat by the neighbours or predators," said Clark. "We've taken the kittens away and will adopt them out. So that's basically what we are doing."

Clark explained that another focus of NCKR will be to help educate residents about the ways in which they can prevent the future growth of feral cat populations through spaying and neutering, and about how they can help by caring for kittens.

"A lot of people have no idea how to feed them," said Clark. "Most cats are lactose intolerant so feeding them cow's milk just doesn't work. If we have people who are going to foster for us, we're going to train them and supply them with kitten milk replacer and food, syringes and bottles and the full kit that they will need. We want to make it easier for people who are trying to help, to help. And we want to educate people that our community created this problem, so now we need to find a solution for it."

They will also be doing fundraising to cover medical costs of rescuing kittens with health issues. Mainly, for now, they want to raise their community profile.

"We are just starting our fundraising and awareness program," said Clark. "We want to tell people we exist. We want to get the kittens we have already adopted, and we need to fundraise to cover their medical costs."

Once kittens have been vaccinated, spayed, neutered, and fostered, they will then be ready for adoption. Posh Paws and Paulmac's are two pet stores in Napanee that have partnered with the kitten rescue to provide space for adoption purposes. When the group's charitable number is assigned then they will pursue partnerships with larger organizations like Petsmart.

"There's a lot of people out there who like to work with multiple rescue groups, lucky for us," said Clark. "Everyone has cats for adoption, we're just one more, but considering the number of kittens we ended up with before we even started I think there's a need for it."

NCKR will avoid accepting kittens from cats that are already pets. They do not want to end up as a kitten collection agency, but rather focus their efforts on the area that is most in need.

"Feral cats are something I've always had a passion for,” she said. “I started rescuing them on my own time with my own money, but decided that wasn't going to work. I was a foster parent for the shelter for a long time as well as everything else I did. When the foster program was shut down to be revamped provincially, I found it very frustrating because I saw all these kittens I'd really like to help.

"Feral cats truly are the forgotten ones. There are stray cats, dumped cats, and then there are the ones that literally have nobody. Those are the ones we want to work with. They're out there because we put them there, and we have to deal with it. I think it's important that we try."